PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Film Festival lasts for only 10 days, and up until the fifth evening of this year’s edition, one could sense an air of discontent encasing the class of 2008. Things began on a mixed note last Thursday when Martin McDonagh’s “In Bruges” opened the festival to mixed reviews. And they only got rockier as, screening by screening, critics swelled with pessimism and buyers shrugged their shoulders.

It wasn’t until late Monday night that big deals started to emerge, from a multimillion-dollar deal for Mark Pellington’s “Henry Poole Is Here,” about a dying man (played by Luke Wilson) trying to retreat into isolation and the neighbors who won’t let him, to a $10 million deal for Andrew Fleming’s “Hamlet 2,” about a washed-up actor named Dana Marschz (played by Steve Coogan) who embraces his new role as a high school drama coach. Audiences have cracked up over Dana’s decision to stage a sequel to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” complete with glitz, glamour, and a juiced-up “sexy Jesus” in the lead role.

As the deals were finalized, and as the millions started to shift hands, everyone in Park City breathed a sigh of relief: This year’s Sundance was another success. Yes, the money began to flow, but as it did, many failed to notice the audacious and challenging works that screened in the festival’s first few days — more than a few hailing from New York. Here are three of the less seen and more ambitious films that boast ties to our fine city.

‘THE BLACK LIST: VOLUME ONE’

It was “The Black List: Volume One” that, for this critic, heralded the beginning of Sundance. From the first moment of this seemingly simple yet carefully refined achievement, I found myself unprepared for the emotional wallop that was to come.

Under the combined control of the director and esteemed photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and the film critic Elvis Mitchell, “The Black List” offers 20 abbreviated interviews with influential black Americans from every corner of society. The final product is an inspiring mosaic that speaks to what it means to live as a black American, and serves as a meditation on how far we have to go as a nation in correcting the inequities that persist to this day.

“It’s one of those things where you go, ‘Whoa, it’s never been done before, but it’s so simple,'” Mr. Mitchell said, referring to the documentary’s use of just two cameras and no narrator. “As an African-American, one of the reasons I wanted to do this was to see something I had never seen before — an honest and insightful acknowledgement of the breadth and depth of the black experience in this country. Honestly, that’s something you don’t see in the mainstream media today. “

Turning to their extensive personal Rolodexes to assemble an astonishing array of personalities, Messrs. Mitchell and Greenfield-Sanders speak with such icons as Sean Combs (to talk about the entertainment industry), Vernon Jordan Jr. (the legal and political universe), Colin Powell (the military and government), and the Rev. Al Sharpton (the prominent role of the church in daily life).

“At some point, if you reach a position of power, you must cope with the realization that you’re black in America, and how do you deal with that?” Mr. Mitchell said. “That’s what I wanted to explore.” It was HBO that suggested adding “Volume One” to the title, advancing the idea that the two collaborators will expand this initial documentary with additional films and an interactive Web site that will encourage visitors to share their own thoughts and experiences.

‘FROZEN RIVER’

Speaking with Courtney Hunt three days after her movie’s world premiere, two things were immediately clear: She was dizzy from her great Utah adventure, and she was slowly coming to realize that her horizons were expanding by the day.

“I’m as classic a Sundance story as you’ll find,” Ms. Hunt, who traveled to Park City from her home in upstate New York, said. “My editor seemed very confident that we’d get in, that this was just the kind of story Sundance was excited about. But never in my wildest dreams did I think this would be happening.”

“Frozen River” begins with the story of a miserable wife who is abandoned and left penniless by her husband. But it quickly evolves into a tale of human smuggling when she teams up with a woman from the Mohawk Indian Reservation to shuttle illegal immigrants across a frozen St. Lawrence River in exchange for cold, hard cash.

Ms. Hunt didn’t seem surprised when she was asked whether the world was eager to see a movie about the less-than-jovial topic of human trafficking. “To be honest, whether or not this specific title gets a distributor, this experience has utterly changed my life,” Ms. Hunt said. “Already, I’m meeting so many actors here who are seeing what I’ve done here, and I feel like I’ve already made the contacts I’ll need to get my next project off the ground.”

‘BLIND DATE’

One of the year’s most divisive entries is Stanley Tucci’s “Blind Date,” an adaptation of the 1996 Theo van Gogh film, which was greeted with a less-than-enthusiastic response from critics and bloggers after its Park City premiere.

Mixing farce with magical realism, the fog of mystery with the anxiety of emotional angst, this brave bit of filmmaking watches an estranged married couple as they go on a series of concocted blind dates, each time playing different characters and each time divulging just a bit more of the deep-seated pain that drove them apart in the first place.

As the dates grow more interesting, both fantastical and disturbing, “Blind Date” shifts from an ambiguous romantic mystery into a psychological thriller as the two broken lovers spiral into despair. Not that many reviewers here at Sundance would know much about the ending. “Yeah, I heard about the screening, but the reason I love film festivals is that they are filled with audiences craving something new and different and original,” Mr. Tucci said of the relative impatience of the press and industry crowd. “I love movies that take their time, and slowly reveal themselves, and tell a story with a new vocabulary and language. And I think there are a lot of people out there like me. I just try to make movies that I’d want to see.”

ssnyder@nysun.com